He waited until the door was shut tight, then said in a low voice, in response to his sister’s disturbed and questioning expression: 

“I have some news.  I know who the woman is who is doing her best to ruin us.”

Lowering his voice still more, after glancing about at the silent walls of their little dining-room, he uttered a name so unexpected that Mademoiselle Planus made him repeat it.

“Is it possible?”

“It is the truth.”

And, despite his grief, he had almost a triumphant air.

His old sister could not believe it.  Such a refined, polite person, who had received her with so much cordiality!—­How could any one imagine such a thing?

“I have proofs,” said Sigismond Planus.

Thereupon he told her how Pere Achille had met Sidonie and Georges one night at eleven o’clock, just as they entered a small furnished lodging-house in the Montmartre quarter; and he was a man who never lied.  They had known him for a long while.  Besides, others had met them.  Nothing else was talked about at the factory.  Risler alone suspected nothing.

“But it is your duty to tell him,” declared Mademoiselle Planus.

The cashier’s face assumed a grave expression.

“It is a very delicate matter.  In the first place, who knows whether he would believe me?  There are blind men so blind that—­And then, by interfering between the two partners, I risk the loss of my place.  Oh! the women—­the women!  When I think how happy Risler might have been.  When I sent for him to come to Paris with his brother, he hadn’t a sou; and to-day he is at the head of one of the first houses in Paris.  Do you suppose that he would be content with that?  Oh! no, of course not!  Monsieur must marry.  As if any one needed to marry!  And, worse yet, he marries a Parisian woman, one of those frowsy-haired chits that are the ruin of an honest house, when he had at his hand a fine girl, of almost his own age, a countrywoman, used to work, and well put together, as you might say!”

“Mademoiselle Planus, my sister,” to whose physical structure he alluded, had a magnificent opportunity to exclaim, “Oh! the men, the men!” but she was silent.  It was a very delicate question, and perhaps, if Risler had chosen in time, he might have been the only one.

Old Sigismond continued: 

“And this is what we have come to.  For three months the leading wall-paper factory in Paris has been tied to the petticoats of that good-for-nothing.  You should see how the money flies.  All day long I do nothing but open my wicket to meet Monsieur Georges’s calls.  He always applies to me, because at his banker’s too much notice would be taken of it, whereas in our office money comes and goes, comes in and goes out.  But look out for the inventory!  We shall have some pretty figures to show at the end of the year.  The worst part of the whole business is that Risler won’t listen to anything.  I have warned him several times:  ’Look out, Monsieur Georges is making a fool of himself for some woman.’  He either turns away with a shrug, or else he tells me that it is none of his business and that Fromont Jeune is the master.  Upon my word, one would almost think—­one would almost think—­”